The first North Korean troops are expected to arrive in Russia’s Kursk region tomorrow to help defend it against Ukraine’s ongoing incursion, the head of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) told The War Zone Tuesday. That information comes as Seoul is considering sending advisors and heavy weapons to Ukraine in response to Pyongyang’s deployment to Russia of upwards of 12,000 soldiers, including elite special operations units.
“We are waiting for the first units tomorrow in the Kursk direction,” Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told us. It is unclear at the moment how many or how they will be equipped. “We will see after a couple of days,” he added.
Alarm about North Korean troop movements to Russia is growing in South Korea. After a meeting to assess the situation, South Korea’s presidential National Security Council said Pyongyang’s deployment poses a “significant security threat” to both South Korea and the international community and is a “blatant violation” of U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting military cooperation with North Korea,” the South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported on Tuesday.
“If the illegal military cooperation between North Korea and Russia continues, (South Korea) will not stand by but respond firmly in collaboration with the international community,” Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo said, according to Yonhap. He warned of “phased measures” in response to the level of their military ties.
“There is a possibility that personnel will be sent to Ukraine to monitor the tactics and combat capabilities of North Korean special forces dispatched in support of Russia,” Yonhap reported, citing a source. “If deployed, the team is expected to be composed of military personnel from intelligence units, who could analyze North Korean battlefield tactics or take part in interrogations of captured North Koreans.”
There are also unconfirmed reports that North Korea has sent fighter pilots to Russia.
A South Korean government official claimed last month that North Korea “dispatched fighter pilots to Vladivostok, a city in the Russian Far East, ahead of the first deployment of its ground troops on October 8,” Newsweek reported, citing TV Chosun. “This could relate to training on Russian combat aircraft supplied to North Korea, the report said. But it could not rule out that Russia, which has suffered from a shortage of pilots” during the all-out war, “had requested assistance from the North.”
Training North Koreans to operate Russian jets, most likely its familiar Su-25 Frogfoot attack jets, would present a host of challenges including language barriers and doctrine, but it isn’t out of the question.
Seoul has a range of defensive weapons systems it could provide Ukraine, the publication noted, “including the Cheongung-II medium-range surface-to-air missile system, which could help Ukraine bolster its air defenses.”
That system is also known as the M-SAM, or Medium-range Surface-to-Air Missile, which is already deployed in South Korea and is optimized to destroy lower-tier ballistic missile threats.
Beyond that, South Korea, a major arms producer, could also provide offensive weapons, like artillery shells, howitzers, tanks and multiple launch rocket systems, Yonhap and the South Korean Chosun-TV media outlet posited.
Since the outbreak of the war, South Korea has provided the United States with 155mm shells “on the condition that the U.S. is the ‘end user’ — a method that observers say might have enabled Seoul to give indirect arms support to Ukraine as the U.S. sends its own stockpiled munitions to Ukraine,” Yonhap noted.
The presence of North Korean troops in Russia “raises the possibility that South Korea could opt to directly supply artillery shells to Ukraine depending on the level of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea,” according to Yonhap. “Other possible weapons systems that might be considered include South Korea’s homegrown K9 self-propelled howitzers, K2 main battle tanks, and Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers.”
Though not mentioned in any local media reports, South Korea also possesses indigenously produced ballistic missiles and combat jets, among other advanced systems, that would be of extreme interest to Kyiv.
South Korea isn’t the only country contemplating increased support to Ukraine over the deployment of troops from the North.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told Politico on Sunday that it’s time for European countries to revisit French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of deploying troops to Ukraine.
“If information about Russia’s killing squads being equipped with North Korean ammunition and military personnel is confirmed, we have to get back to ‘boots on the ground’ and other ideas proposed by Macron,” Landsbergis told the news outlet.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol spoke with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Rutte urged Seoul to send a delegation to NATO “to share data and suggested boosting cooperation in the defense industry and security dialogue among South Korea, Ukraine and NATO to respond if the North sends more soldiers to Russia.”
Yoon asked for access to NATO’s battle management system.
“We hope that the procedure for joining NATO’s Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation Systems (BICES) is quickly finalized so that we can communicate with NATO in real-time and share data safely and effectively,” Yoon said, the South Korean Korea.Net news outlet reported. “The NATO chief responded by saying he would strive to ensure swift progress.”
On Twitter, Rutte said North Korea sending troops to Russia “would mark a significant escalation.”
As we previously reported, North Korean soldiers dispatched to Russia “are currently stationed at Russian military bases in the Far East, including Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk, and Blagoveshchensk,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) stated in a new assessment released last week. Those troops “are expected to be deployed to the front lines as soon as they complete their adaptation training.”
At least six of Pyongyang’s forces, as we previously noted, have already been killed in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the independent Russian ASTRA news outlet published video on Telegram claiming to show North Korean troops in Russia.
“ASTRA geolocated a video that, as its creators behind the scenes claim, shows the arrival of North Korean soldiers at a military base,” the outlet reported. “Apparently, this is military unit 44980 of the 127th Motorized Rifle Division in the village of Sergeyevka in Primorsky Krai.”
All this comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted a draft law to the Russian State Duma recently seeking ratification of a strategic partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, hammered out in June. It calls for each side to provide military assistance to each other in the event of war.
With that strategic partnership in place, having intelligence troops on the front to learn about Russia’s capabilities would be an important asset for South Korea.
As the war in Ukraine grinds on, North Korea’s supply of troops and arms to Russia helps Vladimir Putin continue his fight. The Pentagon recently said that some 600,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded since the all-out invasion was launched in February 2022 and that September saw the highest rate of casualties of any month since.
In response to assertions that her country is sending troops to Russia, Kim Jong-un, the powerful sister of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un slammed South Korea and Ukraine on Tuesday for what she claimed was a military provocation against Pyongyang. She likened the two countries to “bad dogs bred by the U.S,” the Korea JoongAng Daily reported.
“A military provocation against a nuclear weapons state may be led to horrible situation, unimaginable for politicians and military experts in any big or small country in the world with their normal thinking to experience,” she said in the statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
Officials in Washington are publicly saying they don’t have evidence yet of a North Korean troop presence in Russia but remain concerned.
“If it’s true that the DPRK soldiers are going there to join the war against Ukraine, it would certainly mark a dangerous and highly concerning development,” White House National Security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
On background, U.S. officials, East Asian diplomats and congressional aides are saying there is not much the U.S. to stop North Korea from sending troops to Russia.
“They concede that Washington has made little to no progress in slowing North Korea’s rogue nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and if it can’t do that, it can only do so much to halt North Korean troop deployments to Russia, too,” those sources told Politico.
There is no indication that the Biden administration will change its policies regarding ‘no U.S. boots on the ground’ in Ukraine or allowing it to use long-range weapons deep inside Russia as the result of these developments. However, as one of the world’s best arms manufacturers with a deep reserve of ammunition, South Korea’s direct involvement in this war could represent a significant boost to Ukraine’s defense.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com